Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: David bloom is on with us, and David, what's a
Speaker 2: defined regenatory agriculture as opposed to sustainability?
Speaker 3: That's a good way to do it. Ian. So basically,
Speaker 3: we all heard the stainability. And when I was teaching
Speaker 3: a permaculture course, which is an ecological design course at
Speaker 3: the Blackwood Indian Reservation some years ago, the medicine elder
Speaker 3: was in the room and he stood up with me
Speaker 3: and he he asked the students in that class, I've
Speaker 3: been hearing about this sustainability, then, can someone explain to
Speaker 3: me what that is? And this one perky woman sits up,
Speaker 3: stands up, and she says, well, it's so that in
Speaker 3: seven generations people will have the same level of resources
Speaker 3: as we have today. We just won't use everything up.
Speaker 3: And Wilbert he thought about that for a second and
Speaker 3: he said, well that all sounds pretty good, but when
Speaker 3: are you going to fix all that stuff you wreck
Speaker 3: you white people? Now. Regenerative agriculture unlike sustainability, which basically
Speaker 3: says let's not make things any worse. That's what sustainability is.
Speaker 3: But regenerative says no, with everything we do, we have
Speaker 3: to repair and improve the environment. Because we're smart monkeys,
Speaker 3: we can do that at the same time we conduct business.
Speaker 3: So let's look at marijuana for a second. In biology,
Speaker 3: so follow me on this little magical mystery tour. You
Speaker 3: mentioned olives earlier. Now, if you look at an olive tree,
Speaker 3: you're going to wonder, how does he get that incredible flavor?
Speaker 3: You know, the tree must be really clever to make
Speaker 3: that stuff. The flavor and the odor of all oil
Speaker 3: and olives, not one bit of it is made by
Speaker 3: the tree. Where the stuff comes from. For that is
Speaker 3: bacteria and fungi in the soil, a helping soil. And
Speaker 3: you know when bacteria and fungi eat something, you know,
Speaker 3: they're little, tiny, one cell things. They also have to
Speaker 3: proove out things. And the stuff that they release into
Speaker 3: the soil is what the roots suck up as fertilizer.
Speaker 3: And those things become the flavor and odor of olive oil.
Speaker 3: Now that's because you have a thriving biology. You know,
Speaker 3: not chemicals, not minerals, but living microorganisms that are eating
Speaker 3: up dead plant matter, et cetera and recycling it into
Speaker 3: new substances which the tree that absorbs and makes these
Speaker 3: wonderful olives. So that whole idea of biology being a
Speaker 3: cooperation between what lives in the soil and the tree
Speaker 3: above it is something that's been missing from agriculture for
Speaker 3: about one hundred years. So I've heard ag professors say, well,
Speaker 3: the soil, that's just a convenient place for the plant
Speaker 3: to put its roots, so that we can add all
Speaker 3: the chemical fertilizer and the plant will suck it up.
Speaker 3: But that chemical fertilizer actually sterilizes and kills all the
Speaker 3: biology in the soil, And so did the pesticides that
Speaker 3: we use for killing insects. When he gets into the
Speaker 3: it kills all that biology. So now we're totally dependent
Speaker 3: on the fertilizers that agriculture has to supply because we
Speaker 3: no longer have a thriving biology to do it. And
Speaker 3: that's not bad. It's like, as we all know, selling
Speaker 3: addictive drugs is like a good business, and chemical fertilizer
Speaker 3: and chemical pesticizer are really addictive. You can't go back easily.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so is the pimento inside of an olive when
Speaker 2: it's having a bad like g I day, No, No,
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. So that's interesting because this is you know,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, olives were one of the first cash
Speaker 2: crops out of Phoenix, which is which is why we
Speaker 2: have Pall Mallive, which is why and there was headquartered
Speaker 2: there for the longest time.
Speaker 3: But I never knew that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, actually, and the Pall Mall of building was
Speaker 2: shaped like a bar soap vaguely but definitely you could
Speaker 2: see that distinct, you know, curve that they had that
Speaker 2: they had pioneered. Anyway, So but on Tuesday of I
Speaker 2: guess it was this week recreational marijuana used became legal
Speaker 2: in Minnesota right to Minnesota's twenty one and older. And
Speaker 2: this this it's although it has slowed down a bit,
Speaker 2: it continues to be recreational marijuana continues to be growing
Speaker 2: in popularity and states for both the tax purposes and
Speaker 2: also because it's just it takes a tremendous amount of
Speaker 2: resources to track down and incarcerate people for weeds.
Speaker 3: So we've gotten over caring about that as a moral
Speaker 3: issue for the most part, and it's all about tax dollars.
Speaker 3: But let me explain how regenerative agriculture and marijuana and
Speaker 3: tax dollars are all related. So I live in Santa
Speaker 3: Cruz County, California, and we have a lot of cannabis business, Therapya,
Speaker 3: Santa crush, you do, legalized not just marijuana, but coyote,
Speaker 3: byahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms, and those same liberalizations are also
Speaker 3: happening in Oakland, California, the whole state of Colorado, and
Speaker 3: we're looking at Washington and Oregon being next. So now
Speaker 3: why is this going on because of the tax dollars?
Speaker 3: So you know here we are, your county is Santa
Speaker 3: Cruz and thinking, okay, how are we going to tax
Speaker 3: these pot guys? They've been illegal for like one hundred years.
Speaker 3: Can we just ask them how much money they made
Speaker 3: and charge them taxes based on how much money? Nah,
Speaker 3: they're not going to tell us the truth. What about Hey,
Speaker 3: how about how much tons of marijuana did you make?
Speaker 3: And we can tax them based on that. Nah, they'll
Speaker 3: lie to us about that too. So they said, ah,
Speaker 3: I know what we're going to do. Let's tax them
Speaker 3: by the square feet in the greenhouse. We'll tax them
Speaker 3: by the square foot. They can't cheat on that. Well,
Speaker 3: the part rowers came to me and said, how do
Speaker 3: we cheat on that?
Speaker 2: I love having you on That's awesome.
Speaker 3: Look, see you should come to my farm and see.
Speaker 3: And so my farm I grow all kinds of organic
Speaker 3: vegetables and other stuff, and I have an alcohol plant
Speaker 3: there as well. You know I wrote that book Alcohol
Speaker 3: can be a guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cells, rappers.
Speaker 3: And people how to make their own fuel. But fuel
Speaker 3: is only part of picture. When you take like in
Speaker 3: my case, old peaches or you know, food processing waste
Speaker 3: that I ferment it in a tank and then I
Speaker 3: filled the alcohol off. Well, that fermentation process. The yeast
Speaker 3: that eat the pulp, the fruit pulp make alcohol, but
Speaker 3: they also breathe out carbon dioxide just like you are,
Speaker 3: and you're breathe out carbon dioxide into the room. Sure well,
Speaker 3: plants are the opposite of people. They need to breathe
Speaker 3: in carbon dioxide. So if you have making all this
Speaker 3: extra carbon dioxide from fermentation, well you conduct that right
Speaker 3: into the greenhouse. And if you have more carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: than average rather than what's normally in the air, you
Speaker 3: can triple your yield per square foot because you're taking
Speaker 3: the byproduct of making the alcohol and use it it
Speaker 3: to feed the plants. The carbon dioxa they need, and
Speaker 3: now you're getting three times of product for square foot,
Speaker 3: but you're only getting taxed on the square foot. So
Speaker 3: you know, you can be very clever with regenerative design
Speaker 3: to work within human systems like the money system.
Speaker 2: So it's not just in that way. Then it beyond sustainable.
Speaker 2: It also becomes regenerative if it's if it's putting oxygen
Speaker 2: back into our environment, which we had sucked out of
Speaker 2: for one reason or another. And an oxygen is something
Speaker 2: which we had become we again we sort of are
Speaker 2: plant based. Oxygen is something we had taken very much
Speaker 2: for granted in our deforestation of places like the Amazon.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, not only that, but you know you're looking
Speaker 3: at places like Africa where people. You can do this
Speaker 3: with any group of people. Say, okay, we have ten people,
Speaker 3: just general party. Okay, you have stand to the left.
Speaker 3: You hadn't stand to the right. Okay, all you guys
Speaker 3: on the right. You represent the part of the world
Speaker 3: that cooks your dinner over a wood fire indoors. That's
Speaker 3: half the world. So you know, we're really all over
Speaker 3: the amount of CO two made by burning oil or
Speaker 3: natural gas or all that stuff. But Number three is
Speaker 3: the burning of wood for cooking, and it's an invisible
Speaker 3: thing to us. Now, alcohol can be used very inexpensively
Speaker 3: to cook people's food, and there's a lot of organizations
Speaker 3: pushing that right now, and it can be made locally
Speaker 3: with a distillery. And that alcohol only gives off when
Speaker 3: you burn it carbon dioxide water, the same thing you
Speaker 3: and I are breathing out. And so basically the plants
Speaker 3: absorb the carbon dioxide out of the air. That's what
Speaker 3: a plant does, photosynthesis, right, We've all heard that word.
Speaker 3: What it means is combining carbon dioxide from the air,
Speaker 3: water and with sunlight to stick it together, and we
Speaker 3: get a carbohydrate carbon dioxide water. So food is largely
Speaker 3: made from carbon dioxide, which is a good thing. So
Speaker 3: what I'm saying is when you look at systems like this,
Speaker 3: you can figure out how to solve problems and make
Speaker 3: more money and more food and better health. That's what
Speaker 3: regenerative agriculture, regenerative design is all about.
Speaker 1: So the.
Speaker 2: Best thing that I mean, one of the best things
Speaker 2: we can do then for our economy, it would be
Speaker 2: to track these things in the making the massive industrial
Speaker 2: vats that make alcohol or these growing number of farms
Speaker 2: that are making weed. Which one is better for the environment.
Speaker 3: Well, heck, put the weed farm next to the alcohol plant.
Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know.
Speaker 3: All these Midwest alcohol plants, they typically have a couple
Speaker 3: of hundred acres around them because you know, you're putting
Speaker 3: up a big plant. Nobody wants to really live next
Speaker 3: to a big plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it smells. It's corn mash and it's other
Speaker 2: stuff and it really reeks.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but oh my god, the corn mash is
Speaker 3: the best.
Speaker 2: First, I'm not saying it's not, but yeah, I was down,
Speaker 2: lived down windows of a place like that, and oh,
Speaker 2: that does a smell you never get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's Yeah, sour mash is that. But it's
Speaker 3: so valuable you just don't let it go to waste. Now. Sure,
Speaker 3: you know, if you take the carbohydrate out of corn,
Speaker 3: which is about seventy five percent of the corn starts right,
Speaker 3: corn starch is a carbohydrate, all that's left over at
Speaker 3: the end is protein and fat and some fiber. So
Speaker 3: it's a much better animal feed for cows because, as
Speaker 3: it turns out, cows cannot just starch. Cows came from
Speaker 3: like Northern Africa, Southern they eat grass. They actually can
Speaker 3: get food value out of something we couldn't by eating grass.
Speaker 3: But if you give them starch, oh, they get horrible gas,
Speaker 3: they have huge gut problems, and they get completely thrown off.
Speaker 3: So when we make alcohol in the United States, we're
Speaker 3: making the best quality animal feed is the byproduct after
Speaker 3: we've removed all that starch in making alcohol. So our
Speaker 3: cattle in the United States, their health has rocketed upwards
Speaker 3: over the last twenty thirty years as we've been increasing
Speaker 3: more alcohol production, and a huge portion of our corn
Speaker 3: is first made into alcohol and then all the valuable
Speaker 3: goodies left over become the animal feed.
Speaker 2: Okay, very interesting. What are the downsides? You know, the
Speaker 2: hamp I know is a great fibrous material, there's a
Speaker 2: natural way of making rope and all these other But
Speaker 2: what are the downsides to the growth of pot These
Speaker 2: giant farms that are selling that are growing and then
Speaker 2: packaging weed.
Speaker 3: I think they fall prey to the same kind of
Speaker 3: thinking that the rest of big agriculture does, so they
Speaker 3: end up not doing things the ecological way, not you know,
Speaker 3: the ones that are just you know, looking to maximize, maximize,
Speaker 3: production and not caring so much about the quality of
Speaker 3: the final product and what that does to the environment.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I got to tell you if
Speaker 3: I'm as liberal as farmer as you can get, but
Speaker 3: what I want your average everyday platform next to my farm.
Speaker 3: I don't think be the best neighbor because you know,
Speaker 3: we don't see yet the development of a market of organic,
Speaker 3: high quality marijuana, you know, which you know would follow
Speaker 3: the same route that high quality food is followed over
Speaker 3: the last forty years. And I'm really I do a
Speaker 3: lot of consulting for popforms that are wanting to pursue
Speaker 3: that goal because there's a hunger, a need to provide
Speaker 3: this healthier, higher quality product, like just like there is
Speaker 3: an organic food. And when you do that, the bug problems,
Speaker 3: for instance, go away, so now you don't need pesticides.
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